“Where are you going?”
“Gerard Turcotte pointed out that I might be in trouble with the law for busting Joel and Ben out of jail. They figure I ought to head for the mountains for a while, wait until things cool off.”
“No,” Claudia protested.
Doc, though, was more pragmatic. “It’s possible, dear. Ethan did break the law, no matter how worthwhile the cause.”
She stared at her husband in disbelief. “And there is nothing we can do?”
“At the moment, I don’t think so. Tomorrow, when things have calmed down, I’ll talk to the sheriff. Jeff is a reasonable man.”
“I’d appreciate that, Doc,” Ethan said.
“You have food and bedding?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“I’ll talk to Gerard after I’ve talked to Jeff,” Doc promised. “He can let you know what I find out.”
Ethan nodded and cracked open the door. Spying nothing out of the ordinary, he slipped through the door and crossed to the barn, where he’d left his borrowed horse. Backing it out of the same stall where he’d kept the Appaloosa, he was just stretching his toe for the stirrup when a voice stopped him cold.
“Going somewhere, Ethan?”
He lowered his foot, reins in one hand, cantle in the other. When he started to lower his arms, the voice said: “Uhn-uh, keep your hands where I can see them.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, Jeff,” Ethan said. “Kestler and his boys were coming through the front door and you were flat on the floor.”
“So you killed my deputy and broke your brothers out of jail, and now you’re riding out after them.”
Ethan turned slowly. “What do you mean . . . killed your deputy?”
“I mean just what I said. You stuck a knife between Ralph Finch’s ribs, then set your brothers free.”
“I didn’t stick Ralph with a knife. He was still alive when I left the jail.”
“Then one of your brothers did it.”
Ethan thought back to the scene in the alley behind the jail. He’d been moving fast, exiting the rear door, gunfire from Kestler and his men still barking the quiet off the night. He remembered leaping Finch’s body, looking down as he passed over the deputy’s prostrate form. He didn’t remember a knife, yet supposed he could have missed it. As dark as it was, everything happening so fast, a knife buried hilt-deep in a man’s ribs would have been an easy thing to miss.
“What did it look like?” Ethan asked. “The knife, I mean.”
“You tell me.”
“Ben carries a camp knife with a Sheffield mark. Joel carries a folder with a three-inch blade. I’m guessing you still have both of them stowed away somewhere in your office.”
Jeff stepped out of an empty stall. “There’s a lantern hanging on a hook beside your head. Light it.”
Ethan did as he was told, then stepped away from his horse—another bay, he saw for the first time.
Jeff moved into the light with a cocked, double-barreled shotgun pointed at Ethan’s stomach. “Let me see your knife,” he said. “Slowly.”
Ethan pulled the short Bowie from its sheath and handed it over, butt first. Jeff took it, studied the blade a moment, then lifted it to his nose to sniff the hammered steel. Satisfied, he handed it back. “It wasn’t that one.”
“I already know that,” Ethan said, feeling a glimmer of hope. “You remember that it was Finch who cold-cocked you, don’t you?”
Jeff hesitated, then shook his head. “All I remember is Kestler and his men coming for your brothers. The next thing I know, I’m sitting in a locked cell with Charlie opening the door for me. He said you killed Ralph, then knocked me over the head so you could free Joel and Ben.”
“That’s not true. I broke Joel and Ben out, all right, but it was Finch who slugged you.”
“You saw him do it?”
“No, but I ran into him in the alley behind the jail and gave him a good smack with my rifle butt. Finch was double-crossing you, Jeff. That’s why I was there, to stop him.”
Jeff’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How do you figure that?”
“Nate Kestler told me.”
“Nate? Nate Kestler just . . .”
“We had to worm it out of him,” Ethan explained.
“We?”
“Me.”
“Ethan, you’re in enough trouble right now. Don’t make it worse with lies.”
“I’m not looking to cause any more trouble than this town’s already got. I caught Nate behind the Bullshead and roughed him up a little to make him tell me what’s been going on around here lately. That’s when he told me he’d overheard his old man talking to Ralph, offering him money to get you out of the way.”
The shotgun’s muzzles came down partway. “That little weasel. He would’ve done it, too. But that doesn’t explain how he got a knife in his ribs.”
“It wasn’t me, and I doubt if it was Joel or Ben. We were all moving pretty fast.”
“Then you’re implying Kestler or one of his men did it?”
“I don’t know what happened to Finch, but if he did take that money so my brothers could hang, then I don’t really care.”
“You’d better care,” Jeff said. “Because right now, Kestler and his men are saying you did it, and I’m bound to believe them if I can’t find proof that says otherwise.”
“You might be bound to it, but I don’t think you do. You wouldn’t have given me my knife if you thought I’d killed your deputy with it.”
Exhaling loudly, Jeff lowered the shotgun the rest of the way. “No, I don’t think you did it, but I do wonder where you’re going now.”
“To find Joel and Ben.”
“You know where they are?”
Ethan shrugged vaguely. “I might.”
“All right, I’m not going to push it, but I want you to go get them, bring them back.”
“To hang?”
“To face the charges that were originally brought against them.” Jeff’s voice softened. “Bring ’em in, Ethan. Let’s get this mess straightened out before anyone else is killed.”
Ethan took up the reins to his horse. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Chapter Seventeen
For all its rumbling thunder and flash lightning, it never did rain that night. Still, Ethan was glad for Badger Dick’s heavy bear-hide coat. When dawn finally broke across the plains the next morning, there was frost everywhere, the short buffalo grass white as fresh-fallen snow.
The land here rolled gently, broken only by twisting draws and the distant line of the Rocky Mountains, still a day’s ride to the west. Ethan kept his borrowed mount to a steady, mile-eating jog, its breath puffing like a straggled gray beard.
He paused long enough, when the sun came up, to dig some jerked venison and cold pan bread from his saddlebags. It was a far cry from last night’s supper with the Carvers, but he ate what he had with relish, washing it down afterward with water from his canteen. He’d been in the saddle six hours already, and hoped to make Elk Camp before sundown.
Nothing stirred in all that vast expanse of high plains until just before noon, when a covey of prairie chickens shot out of the grass two hundred yards away. The bay snorted and threw up its head, and Ethan reached for his revolver. When a man’s head appeared above the lip of a shallow draw near where the prairie chickens had taken flight, Ethan let his hand fall away from his sidearm. Pulling up, he waited for Joel and Ben to lope their horses to him.
“What are you doing out here?” Ben shouted while still a hundred yards away.
Joel snapped something at the younger man that Ethan couldn’t hear, and Ben replied: “Heck, ain’t no one out here gonna hear us.”
They rode up—Joel grim-faced and haggard, Ben smiling like a kid with a pocketful of candy.
“You bring us anything to eat?” Ben asked, drawing rein. “You forgot to put any food in your saddlebags.”
Joel shook his head in disgust. “I forgot how much that kid ca
n jabber when he ain’t distracted by something like a hangman’s rope.”
“I’m hungry,” Ben protested. “We saw an antelope earlier, but Joel was afraid to shoot it. Said someone might hear us.”
“He was right,” Ethan said, dismounting and digging through the supplies Mary Many Robes had sent along. He passed out pieces of jerky and bread, then stood back to watch them eat. Joel had Ethan’s .50-95 Winchester balanced across his saddlebows, but he was also carrying a revolver tucked inside the waistband of his trousers. Ethan cocked his head curiously.
“Where’d you get the wheel gun?”
Joel gave him a chary look. “It’s mine.”
“Huh! Ain’t, either,” Ben said. “He took it offa Ralph Finch, out back of the jail.”
“That Finch’s pistol?” Ethan asked pointedly.
Joel shifted a strip of jerky to his left hand, let his right come down close to the revolver. “It’s mine now, and poor enough pay for the crap we put up with while we were locked up.”
“He spit in our food,” Ben added solemnly. “Laughed about it, too. Me ’n’ Joel’s gonna whale the tar outta that boy when this other business is settled.”
Ethan studied Joel closely, but couldn’t read anything except stubbornness in the younger man’s expression. “I reckon you’ve both missed your opportunity,” he said. “I talked to Jeff Burke last night, and Finch is dead.”
“Dead,” Ben echoed. “What did you do to him, Ethan?”
“I didn’t do anything to him,” Ethan replied irritably. “Somebody knifed him.”
There was no immediate response to that. Ethan continued to watch Joel’s face for any telltale sign of guilt, but saw nothing. It was Ben who broke the strained silence. “Whoowee,” he said softly. “I knowed folks didn’t like ’im, but I never figured he had enemies that’d want to kill ’im.”
“Maybe he owed somebody money,” Joel said, mulishly returning Ethan’s stare.
“Or somebody owed him money and didn’t want to pay it,” Ethan suggested.
“Maybe he spit into somebody’s food once too often,” Ben added. “I’d’ve been tempted to stick a knife in him myself, if I’d’ve had one handy. He laughed when he did it, Ethan. That ain’t right.”
“Ralph Finch wasn’t the sharpest blade on the butcher’s block,” Joel opined. “Likely the squirt here is right. Somebody got a chance to pay him back, and did.”
“That’s possible,” Ethan agreed, stepping into the saddle of his borrowed horse.
“You figure it was something else?” Joel asked with an edge in his voice.
“Pull your horns in,” Ethan said. “You’re carrying Finch’s revolver. Anybody sees it and knows what happened last night is naturally going to wonder.”
“They can wonder all they want, long as they don’t say anything about it where I can hear them. I’ve run plumb out of patience, big Brother, and I’m liable to bust a cap on the next son-of-a-bitch who tries to cross me today.”
Ben gaped at Joel like he was a circus act. “What’s got your hackles up?” he asked.
“I was damn’ near hung last night,” Joel snapped.
“Me, too,” Ben replied, innocently puzzled.
Staying calm, Ethan said: “Yeah, but neither of you were hung, and I figure we’ve got trouble enough without one of you threatening to shoot the next guy who asks you a question.”
“It ain’t none of your business who I shoot,” Joel said stonily.
Ethan sighed. “Shut up, Joel,” he said wearily. “You’re starting to sound like a magpie in a woodpile.”
Ben chuckled. “About time someone else got told to shut up. What I wanna know is, where’re we goin’?”
“I sure as hell ain’t going to Elk Camp,” Joel said. “We’d freeze our asses off up that high.”
He eyed the bear-hide coat Ethan was wearing with envy. “That’s what we need . . . some heavy clothes.”
“And gloves,” Ben added. “My fingers is freezin’.”
“What we ought to do is ride back to Sundance and pay Sam Davidson a little visit,” Joel said. “Outfit ourselves with better guns and some decent winter duds, then light a shuck for Canada and never look back.”
“Run?” Ben said, gaze flitting between Ethan and Joel, lips speckled with crumbs. “Why should we run? We didn’t do nothin’.”
“It doesn’t matter what we did or didn’t do. If you still think Jeff Burke can keep our necks out of the noose after last night, you’re an idiot.”
“But this is our home,” Ben said. “I don’t want to leave.” He looked at Ethan. “We ain’t gonna run, are we?”
“No, we aren’t.” Ethan reined his horse around to face Joel. “I promised Jeff I’d bring the two of you back to Sundance. I aim to do it.”
“Tell Burke you tried, but that I wouldn’t come in,” Joel replied. “Ben can go with you if he wants. I won’t.”
The muscles across the back of Ethan’s skull drew taut. He could feel his own temper finally starting to bubble, patience stretched thin like rubber. He struggled to keep it under rein. “If you run now, Joel, it’ll be the same as admitting you beat that girl. Is that what you want?”
“What I want is to not get my neck stretched for popping Suzie Merrick upside her head.” He stopped abruptly, then shook his head. “I ain’t saying I hit her, Ethan, but I am saying just about anybody would. She was making promises she had no intention of keeping, toying with me ’n’ Nate Kestler like we were spiders on a string.”
“Kestler isn’t the one accused of beating her,” Ethan reminded him.
Joel guffawed. “When his daddy is Charlie Kestler, the biggest rancher in these parts? Hell, no, she wouldn’t accuse Natey.”
There was a lot of truth in what Joel said, Ethan knew, but that wouldn’t matter to the citizens of Sundance. If Joel ran now, they’d peg him guilty as surely as if he’d confessed. Shaking his head, he said: “I can’t let you do it, Joel. If you take off, they’ll say you’re guilty, and just naturally assume Ben is, too.”
Ben’s eyes widened. “I don’t wanna go back if they’re gonna hang me, Ethan. I’d rather go with Joel than get lynched.”
“I’m not going to let you run, Ben.”
“It ain’t your call, Eth,” Joel said smugly. “Ben’s fourteen, old enough to make his own decisions. If he wants to ride with me, I won’t let you stop him.”
“You threatening me, little Brother?”
“Call it what you want,” Joel replied, moving his hand to the revolver tucked inside his waistband.
“Joel,” Ben said uncertainly. “Don’t do that.”
“Shut up, Ben. I’m doing this for you.” He started to slide the revolver from his waistband, yet seemed uncertain how far he could go before Ethan reacted.
Ethan didn’t know the answer to that, either. Just the thought of going up against Joel in a gunfight made him feel nauseous. “Joel,” he said finally, warningly.
“I mean it, Ethan. I’ll shoot you before I go back.”
“Joel!” Ben exclaimed.
“Shut up!” Joel shouted, yanking at his revolver while Ethan sat there with his own gun holstered, wondering if he was going to be shot down like a rabid dog by his own kin.
It was Ben, surprising all of them, who put a stop to Joel’s draw. He’d been holding a canteen half filled with water and heavy as a blacksmith’s hammer. When Joel started to pull his piece, Ben swung the canteen by its strap, bringing it over his horse’s neck and straight into Joel’s face. The canteen caught him squarely, and blood spurted in every direction. Joel howled as he tumbled off the back of his horse. Ethan jumped to the ground and grabbed the Winchester, kicking Finch’s revolver out of reach at the same time. Joel writhed on his back, blood pumping between his fingers.
“Aw, hell,” Ben said, dropping from his saddle.
“Stay put,” Ethan ordered.
Ben stopped, but he looked half sick with regret. “I didn’t mean it, Joel. Don’t be mad
.”
“Would you have rather he shot me?” Ethan asked.
“He wouldn’t have shot you,” Ben flung back, nearly in tears. “He was just trying to buffalo you into letting me go with him.”
“The hell he was,” Ethan growled. “You saw the look in his eyes, same as I did.”
Ben wagged his head in anguish. “I think I broke his nose.”
“What I hope you did was knock some sense into his head.”
“You son-of-a-bitch,” Joel said, struggling to sit up.
“I didn’t mean it,” Ben pleaded. “Honest, I didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter what you meant, you dumb little shit,” Joel moaned, tenderly prodding his nose. “Goddamn, it’s all wiggly.”
“Let’s go back to town,” Ethan said. “We can have Doc Carver look at it before we turn ourselves in to Jeff. That’ll give us a chance to look in on Vic, too.”
Ben’s head swung around. “Hey . . . Vic?”
“Not too good,” Ethan replied, reading his mind.
Some of the color seemed to drain out of Ben’s face. “He ain’t gonna die, is he?”
“Doc seems to think so. Me, I figure he’s a Wilder. He’ll stand a chance if he just hangs on.”
Ben looked at Joel. “We gotta go back now. We can’t leave Vic there to die alone.”
Joel got to his feet, face a bloody mess, eyes already starting to blacken and swell. “You figure it’ll make his dying easier if we’re buried with him, huh?”
“Get on your horse,” Ethan said, his patience finally wearing out. “We’re going back, whether you like it or not.”
Chapter Eighteen
The sun was still up but the shadows were stretched long before them. Approaching from the west, they came in sight of Cemetery Hill first, barely a knoll by Rocky Mountain standards, but the tallest point within an hour’s ride of Sundance in any direction. The road, a trace cut across the prairie sod, wound around the north side of the hill, but Ethan guided his mount—he was astride the Appaloosa again, the Winchester booted under his right leg—off the twin wagon tracks.
“We’ll keep that hill between us and town as long as we can,” he said.
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